Today marks my last full day in Belfast, Northern Ireland. And I’m stuck at home with a bit of a cold and a sore throat. Usually if I’m feeling a little sorry for myself, I like to whip up something quick and comforting. A fudgey cake-like thing is often my Plan A (Plan B being cheese on toast). If there is a block of Lindt 70% in the cupboard and a scrape or two left of vanilla ice-cream in the freezer, then everything is going swimmingly, George Peppard. With this happy injection of chocolate, I then proceed to curl up on the couch, and watch something trashy on TV. I am particularly obsessed with food/cooking programs (surprise surprise). Stefan Gates’ Cooking in the Danger Zone was a recent good one and Gordon Ramsay is always entertaining.

A couple of days ago, I spotted a set of cute white ramekins in B’s mom’s kitchen, and decided to make some mini chocolate cakes. (The ramekins remind me of little flower pots, so I imagine it might be interesting to try baking small bread rolls or even muffins in them). These cakes can be made with plain flour instead of ground almonds, if you happen to not have any almonds in the house. For a more pudding-y feel, I served the cakes warm, ladled over with a generous spoonful of warm chocolate sauce (flavour this with a dash of Baileys, depending on the location of your occasion).

Jill Dupleix’s Little Chocolate Cakes :

Makes 12

200g bittersweet dark chocolate
100g caster sugar
120g butter
100g ground almonds
4 large eggs, separated
icing sugar for dusting

Heat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.

Roughly chop the chocolate. Fit a heatproof bowl into a saucepan of simmering water, and combine the chocolate, sugar and butter in the bowl. Stir as it melts into a smooth and glossy sauce. Remove from the heat and cool for 5 minutes.

Add the ground almonds, and stir well. Beat in the egg yolks, one by one, until well-mixed.

Place the egg whites in a large dry bowl and beat until stiff and peaky. Stir a large spoonful of egg white into the chocolate mixture to lighten it, then gently fold in the remaining egg white.

Spoon into lightly buttered large-muffin moulds or doubled cake papers, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before removing from moulds. Serve at room temperature, dusted with icing sugar. Store in an airtight container for up to three days.

I love cooking with new ingredients. The sense of excitement starts from the moment you bring the item home from the shops and culminates in the final product being pulled out of the oven or off the stove. I still remember the first time I used a real vanilla bean for a batch of vanilla ice-cream, tender saffron threads for a saffron and tomato broth, and blue cheese in a cream of broccoli soup. The last ingredient was particularly memorable because I unknowingly smudged a bit of cheese into the arm of my coat and the smell followed me for the rest of the evening.

My latest new ingredient is organic spelt flour. I spied it a couple of weeks ago in a recipe by Nigel Slater for Damson Spelt Cake. The name alone sounds so positively tea-with-mrs-norris that I couldn’t resist. Nigel says that the benefit of spelt flour is that it “..gives a tender and open crumb to the cake”, but plain flour can be used instead, if spelt proves to be elusive.

It’s getting quite late in the year for plums, so I had difficulty finding Damsons. Instead, I picked up some English Plums and Greengages. The Greengages were fantastic eaten as they were, and the English Plums with their lovely red skin, went into the cake. The following is the original recipe by Nigel Slater.

Damson Spelt Cake :

150g butter
150g unrefined golden caster sugar
3 large eggs
110g spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
75g ground almonds
400g damsons
an extra tbsp of sugar
icing sugar to finish

You will need a square cake tin measuring about 20-22cm across the base. Set the oven at 180’C. Line the bottom of the cake tin with baking parchment.

Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy. It is easier to do this with an electric mixer, but some prefer the wooden spoon method. Don’t stop until the mixture is almost white. Crack the eggs and beat them gently, then add to the mixture a little at a time, beating thoroughly between each lot.

Mix the flour and baking powder, and add to the ground almonds. Fold into the cake mixture, gently but firmly. If you overmix, the cake will be heavy. Transfer the mixture to the lined cake tin with a rubber spatula, then lay the damons on top and shake over the tablespoon of sugar. (The damsons will sink during cooking, leaving one or two peeping through the surface.)

Bake for 45 minutes, covering with tin foil for the last 10 minutes if it looks to be browning too quickly. Remove from the oven, leave to settle down and then, when almost cool, remove from the tin. Dust lightly with icing sugar and serve.

I was suffering from a case of the Why Nots the other day, standing in front of the crates of vegetables at Sainsburys. In one hand was a bunch of perfectly ordinary orange carrots, but from the corner of my eye I had spied a container of purple carrots. And yes, why not indeed. I’ve made this carrot and ginger cake so many times that I can almost taste the crumbs in my mouth, even while the ingredients are still being weighed up into a bowl. It’s nice to add a little something different to the mix every now and again, just to see what kind of difference it makes. Diced candied yellow peach is as nice as candied ginger, for example.

The purple carrots are quite sweet and attractive in their raw form, but the big question is, would it lend a purplish hue to the resulting cake? As it happens, the answer is not really; the cake doesn’t turn out as vibrantly purple or as exotic-looking as purple rice and furthermore, when stirred in the bowl, the mixture morphs into an alarming shade of grey. The baked cake is however devilishly dark, like a Rhett Butler of the cake world with it’s slick of frosting, and welcomingly damp, as Nigella might describe it.

What other Why Nots can this cake handle? A substitution of grated beetroot or apple for carrot? Why not omit the cream cheese frosting, to ease the calorific burden. Why not bake to the rhythm of Camille. Why not make a cake at least once a month, to gladden the hearts of friends.